Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 15/06/09
Label: Hassle

Australian born Brody Dalle is a terrifying prospect. As the lead singer of Los Angeles based The Distillers between 1998 and 2005, she carved a niche as a more punk rock, more attractive, more talented, more ferocious Courtney Love, and a natural successor to her idol Joan Jett. She even had a tattoo on her right upper arm with the words "f*ck" and "you" inked onto her skin either end of a skull.

Then she met the Queens Of The Stone Age's Josh Homme (an evolutionary step up from ex-husband, Rancid frontman Tim Armstrong), went off to (probably) have loads of frighteningly masochistic sex, changed her name to Brody Dalle-Homme and had a baby. You can forgive her, then, for softening up a bit. But forgiveness needn't come into it, because Spinnerette are better than The Distillers ever were.

Where her former act just made sneering grunty fight-punk, Spinnerette have proper tunes, proper lyrics and proper choruses. Marriage to two proven master songwriters has probably helped. But whatever, it's a positive move.

"Geeking" is a bulkier, female-fronted version of The Ramones that happily steals the intro from Muse's "Starlight" but quickly morphs into something scarier. "All Babes Are Wolves" is a charming thrash-punk ode to her husband ("Oh babe I would die for you / Oh babe I will never leave); while "Sex Bomb" does the same with some added nods to her recently dead dad ("I don't want another man, I cry myself to sleep at night / I want you to be my daddy, why won't you be my daddy?").

Dalle's also uncovered an appreciation for her own voice, using it to decorate song outros with some uncharacteristically feminine lyrical twists. But anyone thinking she's pussied out would be wrong. She's made it clear that Spinnerette is her band and she's the only permanent member. She's not giving up her title of Strongest Woman In Rock. She's just having a better time. "Baptized By Fire" is essentially a song about going on holiday ("I've been sailing on, out into Bermuda blue"), complete with some Spanish-sounding guitar.

Dalle's real name is Bree Joanna Alice Robinson, but she changed it to mimic French actress Beatrice Dalle, after splitting with Armstrong. Beatrice was an ex-model prone to getting arrested, playing cannibals and marrying prison inmates. It's a good example of how Brody's influences might seem obvious from the outset, but are actually more complex. Even if none of them are anything other than tough as hell.

    by Tom Howard